James Beard Award Winners 2018: The Best Restaurants in the U.S.

Turns out that Seattle is now the place to go for amazing Southern food at a restaurant run by a French-trained chef. Edourado Jordan scored the most coveted loot at last night's James Beard Awards—the so-called Oscars of the food world—taking home Best New Restaurant for Seattle’s buzzy JuneBaby and Best Chef: Northwest for Salare. Jordan’s first restaurant, the French-Italian Salare, was followed by JuneBaby, pictured, which Jordan says tells the story of Southern food in America.

“I’m able to tell that story 3,000 miles away from where it first landed on American soil, and people are hearing me and understanding what I’m trying to do,” Jordan told us. “It’s an amazing feeling to be in the Pacific Northwest and have a Southern restaurant that people are listening to. I think with Salare and JuneBaby, we’re waking up the country that Seattle is a force to be reckoned with from a food standpoint.”

Other big James Beard Award winners of the night were Gabrielle Hamilton of New York’sPrune for Outstanding Chef, Camille Cogswell of Philadelphia’s Isreali-themed Zahav for Rising Star Chef of the Year, and Birmingham’s Highlands Bar & Grill for Outstanding Restaurant. Dolester Miles of the Alabama restaurant, who made it to stage with tears of joy, also took home the Outstanding Pastry Chef award.

In fact, the South showed up powerfully with wins in several categories. Charleston also soared with Outstanding Wine Program for Fig and Rodney Scott of Rodney Scott’s BBQ won Best Chef: Southeast. New Orleans took home Outstanding Bar Program for Cure while the charming Nina Compton of Caribbean-meets-European Compère Lapin won Best Chef South. The Saint Lucia–born Compton says that in New Orleans, it’s all about appreciating the deep-rooted local culture.

NYC's Prune gets a big win with Gabrielle Hamilton taking home Outstanding Chef of the Year.

Photo by Eric Wolfinger

“[Compére Lapin] is almost three years old and we have really appreciated and been very respectful of the cuisine and traditions that are there,” Compton told us. “[We’re] making it fun and reinventing a couple of things, but being very respectful and really playing on the bounty of the seafood that’s there, the spices, the sausages—everything that New Orleans does.”

Other notable regions include San Francisco, which crushed categories from Outstanding Baker (B. Patisserie) to Outstanding Service (Zuni Café), and burgeoning Minneapolis, which saw an expected win from Gavin Kaysen of Spoon and Stable for Best Chef: Midwest and 12 nominees across several categories.

Women were another dominating force across the 2018 awards, something that aligned with this year’s theme to “Rise” in celebration of the diverse community behind some of the best restaurants in the U.S. (A panel of 600-plus judges, about half of which are previous winners, choose the new crew each year.) There were calls to stand up powerfully for and with women in acceptance speeches, many with #MeToo moments. Women also dominated regions like New York, where literally every winner was female, including Gabrielle Hamilton, superstar chef Missy Robbins as Best Chef: New York City for her Italian resto Lilia in Williamsburg, and even the three-women-led design firm MP Shift, which received the Restaurant Design Award for De Maria.

We love Missy Robbins and Lilia, and we're glad the James Beardies do, too.